“I say, Phil, don’t be ass enough to tell anybody else about this, even if you’re cocksure he’s the man.  He was doubtless driven to the stage for financial reasons, you know, and it wouldn’t be quite right to bring it up now if he has a desire to suppress the truth.  Since he has come into the title and estates it might be deuced awkward to have that sort of a past raked up.”

“I should say it would be awkward if that part of his past were raked up.  He wasn’t a Puritan, Bob.”

“They are a bit scarce at best.”

“He was known in those days as Giovanni Pavesi, and he wasn’t in such dire financial straits, either.  It was his money that backed the enterprise, and it was common property, undenied by him or anyone else, that the chief object in the speculation was the love of the prima donna, Carmenita Malban.  And, Bob, she was the most beautiful woman I ever saw.  The story was that she was a countess or something of the sort.  Poverty forced her to make use of a glorious voice, and the devil sent Pagani to young Pavesi, who was then a student with some ripping big master, in the hope that he would interest the young man in a scheme to tour South America.  It seems that Signorita Malban’s beauty set his heart on fire, and he promptly produced the coin to back the enterprise, the only condition being that he was to sing the tenor roles.  All this came out in the trial, you know.”  “The trial!  What trial?”

“Giovanni’s.  Let me think a minute.  She was killed on the 29th of March, and he was not arrested until they had virtually convicted one of the chorus men of the murder.  Pagani and Pavesi quarrelled, and the former openly accused his ‘angel’ of the crime.  This led to an arrest just as the tenor was getting away on a ship bound for Spain.”

“Arrested him for the murder of the woman?  On my life, Quentin, you make a serious blunder unless you can prove all this.  When did it all happen?”

“Two years ago.  Oh, I’m not mistaken about it; it is as clear as sunlight to me now.  They took him back and tried him.  Members of the troupe swore he had threatened on numerous occasions to kill her if she continued to repulse him.  On the night of the murder—­it was after the opera—­he was heard to threaten her.  She defied him, and one of the women in the company testified that he sought to intimidate Malban by placing the point of his stiletto against her white neck.  But, in spite of all this, he was acquitted.  I was in New York when the trial ended, but I read of the verdict in the press dispatches.  Some one killed her, that is certain, and the nasty job was done in her room at the hotel.  I heard some of the evidence, and I’ll say that I believed he was the guilty man, but I considered him insane when he committed the crime.  He loved her to the point of madness, and she would not yield to his passion.  It was shown that she loved the chorus singer who was first charged with her murder.”